So, I finally got around to part 2 of this. I was blown away by how positive the feedback for the first chapter was, so thank you all very much :) I'm also taking requests for oneshots; just name the pairing and the scenario and I'll see what I can do with it. I generally don't do slash and OCs, but I'll happily have a try at any het couple, femslash or non-romantic scenario using actual wrestling characters.
"So, after an hour of the most dim-witted, asinine questions I've ever had to answer, he says: 'Thanks for stopping by, buddy. Coffee Kingsman from the WWF, everybody!' I swear he was doing it just to fuck with me. Worst interview I've ever done, hands down," Kofi ranted. Dolph did his best to appear engaged and empathetic, but in reality his mind was running wild with speculation and, if he was being honest, a fair amount of nerves, over what the next few hours would entail.
Could he keep this most easily-distracted of women entertained? Would they have any common ground whatsoever when it came down to it? Would he be able to tease out the real Emma out of her awkward, zany shell? Would she even show up? He was tired of running these questions through his head. He needed to let them out.
"Aren't you going to ask why I'm looking a little overdressed for making chitchat in the lobby?" he asked Kofi, flashing his customary cocksure grin.
"Well, I was gonna, but you do yourself up to the nines for the hell of it so often I figured you just felt like having an above average amount of girls look in your direction tonight," Kofi shrugged. Dolph chuckled. He was always one to dress to impress, even when he had no one in particular to wow.
"Very true. But tonight isn't about showing off for the sake of showing off, oh no. Tonight I'm putting on the style for one lucky lady in particular," he replied in the swagger-laden, bragging tone for which he was known, effectively masking (he hoped) the anxiety that said lady brought out in him.
"Ah, I see," Kofi replied in a high tone of piqued interest, raising his eyebrows.
"And who would that be? Anyone I would know?"
"I'm sure you know of her. But I don't think anyone here really knows her..." Dolph replied.
"...And that's what tonight is all about. Me being the first one to burst the bubble... and for once, that wasn't meant to sound dirty."
"Wait a second; bubble?" Kofi queried, then chortled in realisation.
"...You mean that Emma girl? Man, you really dig yourself a crazy chick, huh?"
"She's not crazy. Trust me, I would know. She's a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in... well, just look at her," Dolph smirked proudly.
"I... believe I'm looking at her... right now," Kofi murmured distractedly, eyes almost bulging out of his sockets as he gazed across the room. He slowly moved his hand to Dolph's shoulder to point him in the direction of what had him so transfixed.
Kofi's loss of composure was wholly justified. There she was, proceeding gingerly across the room, wearing a knee-length navy blue dress that she could not possibly have done a better job of filling. It was a testament to how good she looked that her complete inability to maintain her balance in heels didn't at all detract from the spectacle.
"Hi," she said with a grin that was equal parts nervousness and excitement. She extended her hand to Dolph before quickly withdrawing it.
"...Sorry... a bit unnecessary when we've already been..." she murmured, pushing her straight blond hair wildly about her face.
"You can shake my hand if you like," Kofi offered with a smirk. Dolph scowled at him; she was clearly extremely ill at ease and casual mocking of her would only make it worse.
"Oh... are you coming too, Kofi?" she questioned in a somewhat crestfallen tone.
"...It's just that Dolph made it sound like..."
"It is a date..." Dolph asserted.
"...Kofi's going to scurry off back to his hotel room to play his video games and call his wife now. Aren't you, Kofi?" he fixed his friend with a meaningful look.
"You mean you crazy kids don't need a chaperone?" Kofi quipped with an indulgent smile.
"You're a year younger than me!" Dolph snapped in retort.
"Well, good luck then, you ol' cradlesnatcher, you. Don't alienate her with references to eight-track tapes and The Brady Bunch," said Kofi, clapping Dolph on the shoulder as he made his way back across the lobby.
Now Dolph was finally able to focus solely on the glorious apparition he would have the pleasure of squiring this evening. She really was most uniquely beautiful, her mesmerising pale blue eyes resting on him in anticipation. Gorgeous, talented and utterly beguiling; he hoped to high heaven that he sufficiently impressed her tonight.
"So, you hungry?" he began somewhat clumsily.
"Absolutely starving," she replied.
"Well, Denver is our oyster, my dear..." he proclaimed.
"...What's it gonna be? Chinese?"
"Had it last night."
"Italian?"
"Had pasta at lunch."
"Thai?"
"Gives me gas like you wouldn't believe..." she lamented.
"You realise you just said that out loud?" Dolph smiled in sympathetic amusement. She shrugged.
"...Anyway, I get the impression that an actual restaurant might be something of an ordeal for you."
"Well, we're a bit overdressed for Burger King," she said with a nervous laugh.
"Says who?" he fired back.
It was 11.30PM and Dolph Ziggler had spent the past hour and a half sat in a Burger King in downtown Denver, dressed in a full suit, with baffled onlookers gawping in his direction every few seconds, while a woman with no apparent off-switch or self-censorship rambled on ceaselessly about herself, only stopping to take bites of her burger and deposit a copious amount of mayonnaise down her front in the process. And he couldn't have been happier.
He could listen to her talk all day. Her impulsiveness and total lack of shame were liberating. He was happy to let her dominate the conversation and embark on her various flights of fancy. But he was still no closer to working her out. She'd not made a single gesture or said a single word to intimate she was remotely interested in him specifically, or whether he was impressing her or not. Maybe she really was just too detached from the conventions of human socialisation to make any headway with.
But still, he felt there was something behind it all. She'd never once mentioned her life before WWE or her friends and family back home. She'd managed to segue any attempt to stear her onto the subject into yet another tale of her NXT successes. Something had to have made her this way.
His time to find out had now expired. They were on the corridor on which their rooms were situated, about to go their separate ways.
"So, you had a good time, right?" Dolph queried with uncharacteristic angst. His usual repertoire of blatant flirtation that always gave him a clear idea of whether or not he was onto a winner had not worked at all with her. She seemed completely oblivious to it all.
"Yeah, of course..." she replied cheerily.
"...at the end of the day you can't beat a good burger. Sorry I got your crotch all sticky."
"What?!"
"When I spilled my Coke on you."
"Oh right, right..." Dolph laughed. Emma seemed entirely unaware of any double entendre. Just as she had seemed unaware that performing a frenetic arm pantomime above a table full of drinks usually ended in tears.
"...but I mean with me. Was I a good date?"
"Sure," she concluded after a brief period of concentration, giving a somewhat nonchalant raise of her eyebrows.
"Well... um... good," Dolph stuttered hesitantly. What on Earth was happening? He was the Show-Off, stealer of a million girlfriends. He should have been sealing this deal. But how did one breach such elaborately-crafted defences? How did one play it smooth with a girl who was anything but? Her awkwardness was contagious.
"So... goodnight and I'll see you tomorrow, I guess," he concluded.
"Yeah, probably," she said flatly. Was it too much to ask for a little positive reinforcement?
He leant in to kiss her, at the same time as she went in for a hug. Their heads met painfully somewhere in the middle. They mumbled apologies and decided to leave it at a chaste peck on one another's cheeks.
Dolph entered his room, threw himself back first onto the bed and questioned aloud:
"What the fuck just happened?"
An hour had passed. Dolph had finally resigned himself to the fact that maybe some mysteries were meant to go unsolved and that he should let Emma go on her merry, mad little way. After all, it was getting caught up in girl drama that had first sent his in-ring fortunes on their downward spiral that continued to this day.
Then all of a sudden, his phone pulsated into life, grinding ear-splittingly against the bedside table. Probably Kofi with a barrage of intrusive questions. He was in no mood for that whatsoever and he was about to tell the Ghanaian as much. Lying on his back, he blindly swiped the phone from the table without checking the caller ID and held it to his ear.
"Ugh... hello?" he growled. There was a substantial pause. Then a soft, timid, Australian voice filled his ear.
"Dolph? I-it's me, Emma," instantly Dolph's fury dissipated; replaced with hope and intrigue. He could never be angry at that voice. He'd forgotten that he'd somehow managed to successfully give her his number. But what did she want?
"Hey, what's up?" he asked drowsily, propping himself up against the headboard.
"I was just ringing to apologise," Emma breathed ruefully.
"Apologise for what?"
"For tonight. You're a great guy. You're sweet and kind and gorgeous, and I just fucked you around with my usual self-absorbed rambling nonsense. You deserved better."
"Well, first of all; thank you very much for the compliments. Nothing I didn't already know, but it's always nice to hear. Second; your rambling is adorable and I very much enjoyed it being directed at me," Dolph replied, his insides swelling with joy at finally being able to engage with her on an emotional level.
"That's something at least, then..." Emma sighed, a smile evident in her voice.
"...But that's not me. Well, it is me, it's just... I'm not very good with people, I kinda... And when I meet a guy I like it's even worse... I just don't want you thinking I'm... y'know... Oh God, this is a disaster, I shouldn't have called."
Dolph shook his head in fond disbelief as she continued to breathlessly rifle through incomplete sentence after incomplete sentence. The mystery was beginning to unravel, the bubble was beginning to burst.
"It's OK, I understand entirely..." he said calmly.
"...This Emmalution stuff is all a front. You're scared that if people get to know the real you they won't like what they see. You think the truth can't possibly be as interesting as this crazy, wacky persona you've crafted for yourself."
"You must think I'm the saddest, fakest fucking loser around," Emma stated darkly. Dolph prepared to tell her how very, very wrong she was.
"You know who else hides behind a larger-than-life facade?" he questioned rhetorically.
"...Me. Dolph Ziggler. Sure, I like showing off, I like prancing and preening for the cameras, but when it's all said and done I like to go home and bury my head in a politics journal, maybe brush up on my sign language, try out my lame comedy in front of my bathroom mirror, I'm a total fucking dork when it comes down to it."
She laughed. God she had a beautiful laugh.
"So it doesn't disappoint you that behind it all there's just a shy girl from Melbourne who likes baking and has a completely unironic love of Miley Cyrus?" she questioned pensively.
"I'll have to explain to you at length why Britney is infinitely better, but no, it doesn't bother me..." Dolph chuckled.
"...So, what would the shy girl from Melbourne say to take 2 of our date at breakfast tomorrow morning? Maybe 9.30? Maybe Waffle House?"
"I think she'd like that very much."
"Well, I guess I'll be seeing her tomorrow then."
"You will."
"Goodnight, my dear."
"Goodnight."
Mystery solved. He couldn't wait to meet the real Emma in the morning.
The End.